“There’s nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.”

To avert disaster, we have not only to teach men to make things but to teach them to have complete moral control over what they make.

Forests are the world’s air-conditioning system-the lungs of the planet-and we are on the verge of switching it off.

All I’m saying is that there is a price to be paid at the sharp end environmentally and everywhere else for the food that is produced in a particular way.

My Rainforests Project has three main elements. Firstly, to determine how much funding the rainforest countries need to re-orientate their economies so that the trees are worth more alive than dead.

Your greatest achievement is to love me.

The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa – slightly off balance.

I think we need to recover the depth, the subtlety, the generosity of imagination, the respect for wisdom that so marked Islam in its great ages.

If your children want to alter society, listen to their reasons and the idealism behind them. Don’t crush them with some clever remark straight away.

It seems to me self-evident that we cannot have capitalism without capital and, very importantly, that the ultimate source of all economic capital is Nature’s capital

To get the best results you must talk to your vegetables.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought, though it might rather puzzle him to do that.

Painting transports me into another dimension which, quite literally, refreshes parts of the soul which other activities can’t reach.

Fast food may appear to be cheap food and, in the literal sense it often is, but that is because huge social and environmental costs are being excluded from the calculations.

I believe passionately that everyone has a particular God-given ability.

We have spent the best part of the past century enthusiastically testing the world to utter destruction; not looking closely enough at the long-term impact our actions will have.

Hong Kong has created one of the most successful societies on Earth.

I try to keep the martial arts up. It’s a good thing, not just physically but also for your mind.

I just do what Clint Eastwood does: Keep moving forward. You can’t look back or think about that kind of stuff too much. You just keep making movies; hopefully you make some good ones.

You get a bigger paycheck if you are the hero. There is something good about it.

Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn’t have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.

I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father, and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up sometimes.

My father was a fish market porter. So I grew up on fish, because he used to steal one a day, I grew up on the very best fish that money could buy, ’cause he only stole the good stuff.

The first couple of times I went out and heard my voice or heard people listening when I wasn’t the one playing it for them, it felt good.

I want to do good work. I want the opportunity to work with good people, and the only way I’m gonna do that is to commit 110% – you get out what you put in.